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Monday, May 13, 2013

Roxbury School Board President Carol Scheneck
would like you to believe that our local school board has been making sound
financial decisions which are in the best interests of the students and the
taxpayers. This could not be further from the truth and the school
board's consideration of outsourcing the cafeteria workers is case in
point.

Anyone who looks at my
voting record as a former Roxbury school board
member knows I am no friend to the New Jersey education
unions. While I spoke out and voted against bloated salary
& entitlement increases, Ms. Scheneck couldn't wait to rubber
stamp them.

In any case, why am I against outsourcing the
cafeteria staff? Well, here are the facts. The state requires
that all in-house cafeteria programs be financially self-sustaining.
The Roxbury cafeteria program is not to receive any local taxpayer funding
what-so-ever. Funding for the food service program is not collected
from the property tax levy.As an
enterprise fund, all money for the current program is supposed to be kept
completely separate from the rest of the school
budget. So, outsourcing the cafeteria workers will not save the
school district hundreds of thousands of tax dollars as did the
outsourcing of the union members of the custodial staff, a
decision Ms. Scheneck vehemently argued and voted against.

So why, then, would the Roxbury School
Board consider outsourcing the operation? Simple. Members of the current
school board want to cover up the fact that our current
Superintendent and Business Administrator have been handed more than two years
of financial mismanagement from the previous administrations and school board
leadership. Just a few short years ago, our previous administration and
school board presidents were asleep at the wheel while the cafeteria used up
more than $100,000 in banked surplus. When the previous business
administrator finally added up the numbers and noticed the loss of tens of
thousands of dollars in a single year, it was too late to correct and the
findings had to be reported to the county superintendent resulting in a
corrective action plan be put into
place. Now, if a third year of financial mismanagement occurs, the
district will be subject to further corrective action from the state.This, as well as the other many corrective
action plans can be found on the Roxbury school district’s website by clicking
on “Our District” and then “State Reporting.”

Clearly, if the prior administrators and
school board presidents were doing their jobs, rather than organizing
student walk outs against Governor Christie and wasting tax dollars by
trying to shut down vocal board members with wrongful legal
procedures, maybe the Roxbury cafeteria program would have been financially
self-sustaining all along.

It is my understanding the cafeteria program
is back in “the black” and will end up making money again this year. Therefore,
I ask the taxpayers of Roxbury to not allow the lowest paid workers in the
Roxbury School system be used as sacrificial lambs because of the careless
leadership of past school board presidents. Instead, join me in calling
for their resignations of Carol Scheneck, John Moschella and Terry D’Agostino,
and let’s give the local school cafeteria workers another year to
prove the present food service program can operate long term with a
profit.